Information Technology

Department of Energy Does Not Effectively Manage Its Supercomputers Gao ID: RCED-98-208 July 17, 1998

Although the Department of Energy (DOE) has about 17 percent of the world's supercomputing capacity and plans to triple that capacity, DOE's national laboratories used only about 59 percent of their available supercomputing capacity in 1997. Opportunities to share supercomputers are being missed, and the largest supercomputers are not being used to run the very large-scale programs that were used to justify their acquisition. In 1997, for example, less than five percent of the jobs run on the largest supercomputers used more than one-half of the machines' capabilities.

GAO noted that: (1) DOE has about 17 percent of the world's supercomputing capacity and is planning to almost triple its capacity over the next 3 years; (2) during FY 1998 through FY 2000, the Department plans to acquire five major supercomputers at an estimated cost of $257 million; (3) overall, DOE's national laboratories used only about 59 percent of their available supercomputing capacity in 1997 and are missing opportunities to share these resources; (4) the sharing of supercomputers among DOE's laboratories and with DOE-funded off-site users is not generally considered as a way to better use existing resources and to forgo the need to acquire more supercomputers; (5) DOE has not effectively overseen the acquisition and use of supercomputers; (6) the Department lacks an investment strategy and a defined process to ensure that supercomputer acquisitions are fully justified and represent the best use of funds among competing priorities; (7) instead, the Department's existing management processes separate supercomputer acquisitions from the projects they support, and the Department's chief information officer does not oversee the acquisition or use of supercomputers; (8) as a result, new supercomputers are planned and acquired with little departmental oversight, while underutilized capacity already exists within the Department; (9) DOE's proposed implementation of the Clinger-Cohen Act will not improve departmental oversight; (10) in April 1998, the Department outlined its plan to implement a new investment planning and oversight process for information technology in response to the Clinger-Cohen Act; (11) this proposed approach reflects the view of the Department's program offices that supercomputers are research tools rather than information technology investments; (12) this approach may also allow DOE's program offices to continue acquiring supercomputers outside the Department's normal process for complying with the Clinger-Cohen Act; (13) contrary to what is envisioned in the Clinger-Cohen Act, this approach effectively places the vast majority of DOE's information technology resources outside the purview of the Department's chief information officer; (14) in addition, the cost and significance of the supercomputers being developed under the Department's Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI) warrants that program's being designated as a strategic system subject to the highest level of departmental oversight; and (15) the ASCI program is estimated to cost about $4 billion from FY 1996 through FY 2010.

Recommendations

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